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I don't want to go deep down this rabbit hole but IMHO there has been a whole lot of historical revisionism and propaganda regarding the history of both Tesla a

by cletus 2y ago

I don't want to go deep down this rabbit hole but IMHO there has been a whole lot of historical revisionism and propaganda regarding the history of both Tesla and SpaceX. Tesla lists Elon Musk as a founder but he didn't found it. He was an early investor who essentially took over the company. Tesla only exists through government largesse, specifically carbon tax credits. Also, it arguably only survived thanks to a 2009 Department of Energy loan (for $465 million). If you look at the history here, this loan is under a cloud. This is particularly funny given Elon's self-made propaganda. SpaceX succeeded (IMHO) in spite of Elon not because of him. I've read (admittedly unverified) accounts where someone in SpaceX's leadership essentially built a wall around Elon to insulate the rest of the company from him. SpaceX engineers themselves are a byproduct of NASA to a large degree. Also, SpaceX could not have succeeded without government loans, grants and contracts. Even today, it's completely reliant on the government purse. Both Tesla and SpaceX have made huge promises and under-delivered on them or delivered late. People forget how delayed the Falcon timeline was. It just didn't matter because there was no competition: the ULA, for example, is a jobs program with no interest in competing on price or features. And self-driving Telsas, anyone? Anyone?

geocrasher 2y ago
You have good points, but I really feel like most of those things could be said about any successful company in the aerospace business.
vl 2y ago
I own a Tesla, for practical purposes it is self-driving.
- justinclift 2y ago
  Including into the back of emergency vehicles?
- toss1 2y ago
  Seriously? Your definition of "self-driving" must be different from normal. Any proper understanding of the term "self driving", including the way Musk advertises it, is 'tell car through the UI where you want it to go, sit back and it reliably gets you there with zero further input, better than the average human driver'. Please post a video of it doing this for any route on real roads, with no driver input. Seriously. I'd love to see it, because I never have. I've seen Tesla videos with few required driver interventions. But not none. And from the accidents I've read about, I sure as shirt would not give it a destination and recline reading a book. Especially on left-turns and near emergency vehicles, turning trucks, or construction barriers. So, what is your definition of self-driving, and what performance can you show? And in what road conditions?
  - throwAGIway 2y ago
    I drove the Mercedes with officially regulated L2 self driving capability and it was much worse than the old Tesla model I tested years before... The current version is supposedly much further based on the online feedback, while the Mercedes is still bad.
    - paulryanrogers 2y ago
      L2 isn't marketed as Full Self Driving
      - throwAGIway 2y ago
        It's called Drive Pilot and the user experience of activation and usage is no different from a Tesla. It's just much less capable.
        toss1 2y ago
        Right, DrivePilot is less capable than a Tesla. Got it. You still have provided ANY example of the topic of the discussion — a car that is actually self-driving, as in can get from one location to another on public roads with zero intervention by a human. Telling us about another less capable car with driver-assist tech advances the conversation how?
        throwAGIway 2y ago
        You said that any proper definition/understanding of self driving means... Well it doesn't. Mercedes will gladly sell you their much less capable self driving. Sure I agree, it'd be great if self driving meant absolutely zero interventions. The market is elsewhere though.
    - toss1 2y ago
      OK, that tells me that the Tesla seems better than the Mercedes. It does NOT tell me that either have achieved anything near the stated standard: "for practical purposes it is self-driving." I don't think anyone promotes (or any reasonable person understands) L2 as self driving. SAE defines L2 assist [0] as "You ARE driving... you must constantly supervise and support these features ... lane centering and adaptive cruise control at the same time". "Self driving" implies to me and everyone I know as "the car drives itself". As in I can safely sleep in the back seat as if another human were driving, or I could ask the car to come or go to a destination, as I could ask another human to drive my car to/from a destination. Can you provide an example of ANY car doing this yet? [0] https://www.sae.org/blog/sae-j3016-update https://www.sae.org/blog/sae-j3016-update
postmeta 2y ago
I don't want to go deep down this rabbit hole, but when Elon "took over the company" it had no IP, or products, or employees and had produced nothing of value. Attributing the success of Tesla to a government loan they paid back early is also joke and insulting to all the hard work of the employees and other investors.
tempnow987 2y ago
"Tesla only exists through government largesse, specifically carbon tax credits." This assumes no subsidies for oil and gas (plenty, including depreciation below cost basis!) In terms of credits - those are in the 2%-3% range of revenue. In terms of SpaceX being the most dependent on the govt - totally false. Things like SLS are cost plus, have cost $20 billion with almost nothing to show for it. SpaceX is so available, cheap and reliable they are literally launching ESA payloads (ESA won't even mention them its so embarrassing), most commercial payloads that can actually go to bid and competitors payloads (looking at you Amazon).
- nooron 2y ago
  US government contracts account for 70%+ of SpaceX’s revenues through 2018. Can’t speculate about since. I like SpaceX but it’s just untrue that they weren’t highly dependent on US gov’t contracts for a long time (which itself is the product of space market liberalization by Obama in 2010).
  - timschmidt 2y ago
    Seems like SpaceX was also the lowest cost provider of launch services during that entire time period. Can't blame the government for shopping around.
    - nooron 2y ago
      I don't. I think it's great.
  - tempnow987 2y ago
    So the government does fund space companies - including slush amounts for things like "launch availability" and launch readiness / quick launch capabilities which are ways to try to keep the reported per launch costs down. For both National Security and other missions SpaceX is FAR cheaper. I'm not sure if that still counts as government "largesse" - which is more about a generous gift or contract. To keep more than one provider in mix the government has been doing some largesse to try to get some money to other providers.
treme 2y ago
[flagged]
- standardUser 2y ago
  Dude's an anti-Semite and a conspiracy theory nutter, so persona non grata to me.
  - 9cb14c1ec0 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - amanaplanacanal 2y ago
      Is that like “some of my best friends are Jewish”?
- AngryData 2y ago
  I would not use Tesla's market valuation as proof of anything, looking at production numbers it is clearly inflated to hell, and they still has big problems with quality control and parts supply. They are doing pretty well yes, but that stock is an obvious ticking timebomb and people are playing hot potato holding on to it.
Manabu-eo 2y ago
He is a founder at Tesla, as when he entered the round A financing Tesla was just three guys, some networking, and nothing more. Even the "Tesla" trademark and logo registration was made by SpaceX people. He didn't found his own car company with just J. B. Straubel (another Tesla founder who was being paid by him to develop electric car batteries at the time) because he thought it would be better to cooperate with that other group that was was inspired by the same idea and he though he would be able to concentrate more on SpaceX that way. He was wrong and had to take "take over the company" later to avoid bankrupcy, move the Model S design headquarters to SpaceX, etc. And it's now nothing like what it was when he first put money on it. As for the loan, Fisker got an even bigger one and went bankrupt[1]. Ford took a much bigger one (justified by their size) and in 2020 still didn't manage to pay it back[2]. What is wrong with the loan Tesla took, kept it alive, and it paid back early with interest? USA likes to tout free markets and lobby against protectionism, but aside from the UK as a first mover nobody ever industrialized without protectionism and directed industrial policy, and I would argue it is impossible or at very least inefficient. I agree SpaceX could not have succeeded w/o the government contracts, but that is true to any space launch company. All SpaceX contracts were acquired as the lowest bidder, often offering dramatically lower prices and higher value than anyone. Just look at the Commercial Crew where Boeing got $4.49B, SpaceX got $2.6B and did a better job. Elon time is a known phenomenon. "At SpaceX we specialize at converting the impossible to late". And delays are a common thing in the aerospace industry. Can you name a rocket in recent times that was developed faster, or even just less delayed than Falcon 1? Or than Falcon 9? I bet you find much easier to name those who were more. Musk succeeded in two industries that were certified money pits. You have a big graveyard both before and after 2002 of bankrupt companies in both fields. It's ludicrous to believe SpaceX succeeded despite Musk when all other "new space" companies started before or around the same time, with the same NASA/Military complex boosted engineers and contracts available to them, failed, and when Musk has been so involved in SpaceX. Instead of unverified accounts, what about hearing about the organizational structure of early Spacex from a senior NASA scientist that worked with them[3] (the whole series of videos with him is very interesting), or many other similar accounts [4]? [1]https://publicintegrity.org/politics/two-doe-electric-car-loans-two-different-paths/ https://publicintegrity.org/politics/two-doe-electric-car-lo... [2]https://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/ford/2020/07/29/ford-government-loan-department-energy-debt/5526413002/ https://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/ford/2020/07/29/ford-... [3]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P06X2TZUKZU&t=197s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P06X2TZUKZU&t=197s [4]https://old.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/k1e0ta/evidence_that_musk_is_the_chief_engineer_of_spacex/ https://old.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/k1e0ta/eviden...
jongjong 2y ago
This rings true but in Elon's defense: - None of the markets he participates in could ever truly be free markets no matter what due to their very high (and necessarily high) capital requirements. It's not like other tech companies which use government money to monopolize markets that have low entry barriers and end up messing with millions of little guys who think they're operating in a free market... Then it takes a decade for them to learn that they actually had 0 chance of ever competing in that market due to asymmetries in margins caused by gov subsidies. - He consistently gave the government value for money. If his companies weren't there, the government would have spent the same amount of money (or more) and obtained worse results.
WalterBright 2y ago
> Tesla lists Elon Musk as a founder but he didn't found it. He was an early investor who essentially took over the company. He invested in a 6 month startup that consisted of an office and desk. Tesla had no money, no plan, and a borrowed electric kit car. Musk was the early investor. From a practical point of view, Musk was indeed the founder. In spite of all your criticism, neither Tesla nor SpaceX would exist without Musk, and Musk has greatly pushed forward the technology of both, creating two new major industries.
deciplex 2y ago
Yeah I mean, I agree with you on this stuff - I just wanted to make a point about production for use vs production for profit and how a manic fixation on the latter can lead to adverse outcomes. And, like I hinted at, I don't think Elon Musk really prioritized the former - in fact I don't think he understands the difference between the two - but he did cultivate a narrative around his personality and management style that led a lot of people to believe that he valued the former, including at his companies which shaped the culture there to some extent.

by cletus 2y ago

geocrasher 2y ago

You have good points, but I really feel like most of those things could be said about any successful company in the aerospace business.

vl 2y ago

I own a Tesla, for practical purposes it is self-driving.

justinclift 2y ago
Including into the back of emergency vehicles?
toss1 2y ago
Seriously? Your definition of "self-driving" must be different from normal. Any proper understanding of the term "self driving", including the way Musk advertises it, is 'tell car through the UI where you want it to go, sit back and it reliably gets you there with zero further input, better than the average human driver'. Please post a video of it doing this for any route on real roads, with no driver input. Seriously. I'd love to see it, because I never have. I've seen Tesla videos with few required driver interventions. But not none. And from the accidents I've read about, I sure as shirt would not give it a destination and recline reading a book. Especially on left-turns and near emergency vehicles, turning trucks, or construction barriers. So, what is your definition of self-driving, and what performance can you show? And in what road conditions?
- throwAGIway 2y ago
  I drove the Mercedes with officially regulated L2 self driving capability and it was much worse than the old Tesla model I tested years before... The current version is supposedly much further based on the online feedback, while the Mercedes is still bad.
  - paulryanrogers 2y ago
    L2 isn't marketed as Full Self Driving
    - throwAGIway 2y ago
      It's called Drive Pilot and the user experience of activation and usage is no different from a Tesla. It's just much less capable.
      - toss1 2y ago
        Right, DrivePilot is less capable than a Tesla. Got it. You still have provided ANY example of the topic of the discussion — a car that is actually self-driving, as in can get from one location to another on public roads with zero intervention by a human. Telling us about another less capable car with driver-assist tech advances the conversation how?
        throwAGIway 2y ago
        You said that any proper definition/understanding of self driving means... Well it doesn't. Mercedes will gladly sell you their much less capable self driving. Sure I agree, it'd be great if self driving meant absolutely zero interventions. The market is elsewhere though.
  - toss1 2y ago
    OK, that tells me that the Tesla seems better than the Mercedes. It does NOT tell me that either have achieved anything near the stated standard: "for practical purposes it is self-driving." I don't think anyone promotes (or any reasonable person understands) L2 as self driving. SAE defines L2 assist [0] as "You ARE driving... you must constantly supervise and support these features ... lane centering and adaptive cruise control at the same time". "Self driving" implies to me and everyone I know as "the car drives itself". As in I can safely sleep in the back seat as if another human were driving, or I could ask the car to come or go to a destination, as I could ask another human to drive my car to/from a destination. Can you provide an example of ANY car doing this yet? [0] https://www.sae.org/blog/sae-j3016-update https://www.sae.org/blog/sae-j3016-update

postmeta 2y ago

I don't want to go deep down this rabbit hole, but when Elon "took over the company" it had no IP, or products, or employees and had produced nothing of value. Attributing the success of Tesla to a government loan they paid back early is also joke and insulting to all the hard work of the employees and other investors.

tempnow987 2y ago

"Tesla only exists through government largesse, specifically carbon tax credits." This assumes no subsidies for oil and gas (plenty, including depreciation below cost basis!) In terms of credits - those are in the 2%-3% range of revenue. In terms of SpaceX being the most dependent on the govt - totally false. Things like SLS are cost plus, have cost $20 billion with almost nothing to show for it. SpaceX is so available, cheap and reliable they are literally launching ESA payloads (ESA won't even mention them its so embarrassing), most commercial payloads that can actually go to bid and competitors payloads (looking at you Amazon).

nooron 2y ago
US government contracts account for 70%+ of SpaceX’s revenues through 2018. Can’t speculate about since. I like SpaceX but it’s just untrue that they weren’t highly dependent on US gov’t contracts for a long time (which itself is the product of space market liberalization by Obama in 2010).
- timschmidt 2y ago
  Seems like SpaceX was also the lowest cost provider of launch services during that entire time period. Can't blame the government for shopping around.
  - nooron 2y ago
    I don't. I think it's great.
- tempnow987 2y ago
  So the government does fund space companies - including slush amounts for things like "launch availability" and launch readiness / quick launch capabilities which are ways to try to keep the reported per launch costs down. For both National Security and other missions SpaceX is FAR cheaper. I'm not sure if that still counts as government "largesse" - which is more about a generous gift or contract. To keep more than one provider in mix the government has been doing some largesse to try to get some money to other providers.

treme 2y ago

[flagged]

standardUser 2y ago
Dude's an anti-Semite and a conspiracy theory nutter, so persona non grata to me.
- 9cb14c1ec0 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - amanaplanacanal 2y ago
    Is that like “some of my best friends are Jewish”?
AngryData 2y ago
I would not use Tesla's market valuation as proof of anything, looking at production numbers it is clearly inflated to hell, and they still has big problems with quality control and parts supply. They are doing pretty well yes, but that stock is an obvious ticking timebomb and people are playing hot potato holding on to it.

Manabu-eo 2y ago

He is a founder at Tesla, as when he entered the round A financing Tesla was just three guys, some networking, and nothing more. Even the "Tesla" trademark and logo registration was made by SpaceX people. He didn't found his own car company with just J. B. Straubel (another Tesla founder who was being paid by him to develop electric car batteries at the time) because he thought it would be better to cooperate with that other group that was was inspired by the same idea and he though he would be able to concentrate more on SpaceX that way. He was wrong and had to take "take over the company" later to avoid bankrupcy, move the Model S design headquarters to SpaceX, etc. And it's now nothing like what it was when he first put money on it. As for the loan, Fisker got an even bigger one and went bankrupt[1]. Ford took a much bigger one (justified by their size) and in 2020 still didn't manage to pay it back[2]. What is wrong with the loan Tesla took, kept it alive, and it paid back early with interest? USA likes to tout free markets and lobby against protectionism, but aside from the UK as a first mover nobody ever industrialized without protectionism and directed industrial policy, and I would argue it is impossible or at very least inefficient. I agree SpaceX could not have succeeded w/o the government contracts, but that is true to any space launch company. All SpaceX contracts were acquired as the lowest bidder, often offering dramatically lower prices and higher value than anyone. Just look at the Commercial Crew where Boeing got $4.49B, SpaceX got $2.6B and did a better job. Elon time is a known phenomenon. "At SpaceX we specialize at converting the impossible to late". And delays are a common thing in the aerospace industry. Can you name a rocket in recent times that was developed faster, or even just less delayed than Falcon 1? Or than Falcon 9? I bet you find much easier to name those who were more. Musk succeeded in two industries that were certified money pits. You have a big graveyard both before and after 2002 of bankrupt companies in both fields. It's ludicrous to believe SpaceX succeeded despite Musk when all other "new space" companies started before or around the same time, with the same NASA/Military complex boosted engineers and contracts available to them, failed, and when Musk has been so involved in SpaceX. Instead of unverified accounts, what about hearing about the organizational structure of early Spacex from a senior NASA scientist that worked with them[3] (the whole series of videos with him is very interesting), or many other similar accounts [4]? [1]https://publicintegrity.org/politics/two-doe-electric-car-loans-two-different-paths/ https://publicintegrity.org/politics/two-doe-electric-car-lo... [2]https://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/ford/2020/07/29/ford-government-loan-department-energy-debt/5526413002/ https://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/ford/2020/07/29/ford-... [3]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P06X2TZUKZU&t=197s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P06X2TZUKZU&t=197s [4]https://old.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/k1e0ta/evidence_that_musk_is_the_chief_engineer_of_spacex/ https://old.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/k1e0ta/eviden...

jongjong 2y ago

This rings true but in Elon's defense: - None of the markets he participates in could ever truly be free markets no matter what due to their very high (and necessarily high) capital requirements. It's not like other tech companies which use government money to monopolize markets that have low entry barriers and end up messing with millions of little guys who think they're operating in a free market... Then it takes a decade for them to learn that they actually had 0 chance of ever competing in that market due to asymmetries in margins caused by gov subsidies. - He consistently gave the government value for money. If his companies weren't there, the government would have spent the same amount of money (or more) and obtained worse results.

WalterBright 2y ago

> Tesla lists Elon Musk as a founder but he didn't found it. He was an early investor who essentially took over the company. He invested in a 6 month startup that consisted of an office and desk. Tesla had no money, no plan, and a borrowed electric kit car. Musk was the early investor. From a practical point of view, Musk was indeed the founder. In spite of all your criticism, neither Tesla nor SpaceX would exist without Musk, and Musk has greatly pushed forward the technology of both, creating two new major industries.

deciplex 2y ago

Yeah I mean, I agree with you on this stuff - I just wanted to make a point about production for use vs production for profit and how a manic fixation on the latter can lead to adverse outcomes. And, like I hinted at, I don't think Elon Musk really prioritized the former - in fact I don't think he understands the difference between the two - but he did cultivate a narrative around his personality and management style that led a lot of people to believe that he valued the former, including at his companies which shaped the culture there to some extent.